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Supreme Court Strikes Out Suit Challenging Establishment Of EFCC
The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a suit filed by 19 state governments against the federal government, challenging the constitutionality of the laws establishing the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission EFCC and two others.
The apex court threw out the suit for lacking in merit and substance.
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Justice Uwani Abba-Aji who read the lead judgment held that the states were completely wrong in holding that EFCC established by an act of the National Assembly was an illegal and unlawful body.
In the unanimous judgment of a 7-man panel of Justices of the court, the power of the EFCC, ICPC and NFIU to arrest and prosecute offenders were affirmed.
The plaintiffs, in the suit, marked: SC/CV/178/2023 had argued that the Supreme Court, in Dr Joseph Nwobike vs Federal Republic of Nigeria, had held that it was a United Nations Convention against corruption that was reduced into the EFCC Establishment Act and that in enacting this law in 2004, the provision of Section 12 of the 1999 Constitution, as amended, was not followed.
The argument was that, in bringing a Convention into the Nigerian law, the provision of Section 12 must be complied with.
According to them, the provision of the Constitution necessitated the majority of the states’ Houses of Assembly agreeing to bring the convention in before passing the EFCC Act and others, which was allegedly never done.
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The argument of the states in their present suit, which they had reportedly been corroborated by the Supreme Court in the previous case mentioned, is that the law, as enacted, could not be applied to states that never approved of it, in accordance with the provisions of the Nigerian constitution.
Hence, they argued that any institution so formed on the basis of reducing a UN Convention to law should be regarded as an illegal institution.
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